


All the Way From Where We Came

by indevan



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Getting Together, M/M, Marriage, Moderately Slow Burn, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 14:00:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12322428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Raditz looked at him and a small smirk formed on his handsome face.  It didn’t escape Seventeen that the brother of his target was good-looking





	All the Way From Where We Came

**Author's Note:**

> this is super self-indulgent (even for me) for my rarepair

It was unsettling when it was over.  When the dragon disappeared and everything was left as it was.  Their new normalcy.  A life without their savior.  Raditz stood apart from the others because he was never really a part of the group.  He was tolerated solely because his brother vouched for him like he vouched for everyone.  Despite their connection of blood, Raditz knew he wasn’t special.

“Let’s get you home,” Yamcha said to Trunks. “I’ll fly with you--coming back from the dead can give you some killer vertigo.”

Trunks smiled and Raditz was hit with a glimmer of nostalgia.  Over a decade ago, on some barren planet.  That same smile but different.  He blinked several times to shake the flicker of a memory.  It’d been a long day, a long week.  The world had shifted and everyone moved on as if it didn’t matter.

“You think Seventeen got revived too?”

“Dunno.”

Raditz wasn’t sure why his ears caught on to that.  People were talking, trying to get beyond the heavy air surrounding them all.  He conjured Seventeen’s face to his memory.  All he could see was how he’d grabbed his ankle as Cell sucked him up--why did he do that?  Nappa always called him a shitty Saiyan--low-class and soft, like his mother.  Raditz would lash out and then Vegeta, who was two years younger than him and far smaller, would easily trounce him and then burst out into raucous laughter.  And now...Vegeta had flown into a murderous rage when Trunks was killed and Raditz couldn’t even cry when his brother blew himself up.  He felt numb, maybe.  Or maybe he needed to go to sleep.

“Uncle.”

He stared down at Gohan who, really, didn’t look much like Kakarrot.  His hair was unevenly cut and his face bore that earnest look but he was all Chi-Chi.  It made looking at him easier, a little.  Maybe.  Shit, his head hurt.

“What?”

“Do you want to come to our house?” he asked. “I gotta tell mom.”

“No.”

He was never welcomed there before.  He stayed by himself, out in the wilderness, and that was where he would return.  Gohan’s face fell.  He looked surprisingly small and innocent for someone who had just saved the world.

“Oh.  I was hoping you would come to dinner.”

“Well, stop hoping.”

It was rude and he knew it but he never knew how to speak to him.  Unlike Gohan’s relationship with Piccolo, he and his nephew never got over their first meeting, despite Kakarrot’s insistence that they “get along” and “bond.”  Why did Kakarrot spare him?  Why did he let him train with him and forgive him?  He never asked and he supposed that now he’d never know.

He flew off after that, leaving Gohan with that wounded, sad face on.  Let him mourn, let him break the news to Chi-Chi and try to move on.  Raditz wanted no part of it.

He had no destination, only a desire to get away.

“Fucking Kakarrot,” he growled.

Why did he have to go and sacrifice himself, anyway?  Why did he always have to be so _noble?_

He never understood it.  He didn’t want to understand it.  He was the one left behind, both in being a Saiyan and being a person.  He was the only one who couldn’t turn his hair gold, the only one the legend skipped.  He knew it was beyond his grasp if watching his brother, the only person who gave a shit about him, die didn’t trigger it.  That thought filled him with a gnawing emptiness he couldn’t quite name.  Despair?

He felt separate from himself and these thoughts, these emotions.  His flying had no purpose just a desire to--go.  He could feel a warm pulse of energy up ahead and he pursued it for something to do.  Kakarrot had taught him to sense ki.  He wasn’t a fucking _prodigy_ like Vegeta who just saw others do it and picked it up himself.  Back when it was something that mattered, he had sworn fealty to him as his prince but what were they now?  The last remnants of a dead race.

His former prince sat by himself on an outcropping of rocks, glaring into the middle distance as if the horizon had done something to offend him.

“Get lost,” he said as Raditz approached. “Or I’ll kill you.”

Raditz landed behind him and said, “I don’t think you will.”

He whipped his head around and held his palm out towards Raditz, fingers spread.  He stared at it and raised his eyebrows, daring him.  He saw his true colors.  The way he flung himself at Cell futilely because his son died.  Maybe that bugged him.  The haughty, selfish prince he had known and tolerated for decades was changing and he couldn’t even cry over his dead brother.  He wasn’t sure why that stuck with him.  Crying.  He’d cried when he found out his planet blew up, when he knew his parents were dead.  He’d cry after particularly trying missions and Vegeta would tease and taunt him.  He used to cry easily so what was wrong now?  After a moment, Vegeta let out a grunt and dropped his arm.

“You aren’t worth it.”

Despite it all, he smirked.  He hadn’t changed but he wasn’t the same either.  Raditz thought about asking him if he was going back to Capsule Corps, but he knew better.  There was something going on inside him that had nothing to do with Raditz.  It was his new life, one away from the constant death and killing.  One Raditz still didn’t fully understand.

\--

He awoke staring at the sky.  It was blue, cloudless, and he could see a bird fly overhead.  He sat up and touched his chest.  He felt bone and skin, but there was a hollow feeling, as if something was missing.  He could hear his mechanical heart whirring and pumping, making a mockery of a heartbeat, but there was something else that wasn’t there.

“The bomb.”

Seventeen looked to see his sister hovering above him.  She was covered in a thin, sticky film but otherwise looked whole.

“You must have just appeared,” she said with slight disdain. “You aren’t covered in Cell goo.”

“Lucky me.” His lips twisted a bit. “What do you mean by the bomb?”

“That shorty,” she said, “he wished on some dragon for the bombs to be removed from our bodies.”

Seventeen conjured the man in his mind’s eye.  Short and bald but with a becoming look to him.  The kind of glow genuinely nice and decent people had.  He remembered so little of their life Before but he knew he was always skilled at reading people.

“Why me?” he asked.

“He thought we were an item.” She rolled her eyes. “What a moron.”

There was something else in her voice, undetectable by all except her dear twin brother.  Seventeen smirked.

“How did you find me?” he asked to change the subject.

“I remembered where you were absorbed and thought to find you here.” Eighteen paused. “I’m just making sure you’re alive.  There’s nothing for us together now, is there?”

There was, he reasoned, because they had always been together.  When they ran away from home and when they were taken by Dr. Gero, they were always together.  Maybe now, though, was a chance to live apart from one another.  A chance to no longer be twin bookends.

“You can go,” he said to assure her. “I’ll find my own way.”

Eighteen hesitated and looked askance.  He knew his sister.  She would pretend not to care but, eventually, she would seek out that shorty and demand to know why, even though he liked her, he was willing to let her go.  Maybe they would live happily ever.  And Seventeen?

“Where’s Sixteen?”

“Gone,” she said and even practiced nonchalance couldn’t hide the sadness in her voice. “Cell, of course.”

“Of course.”

There was a gnawing in his chest he couldn’t name.  Sadness, sure, but something more.  Sixteen somehow humanized him and his sister.  He was kind, quiet, and patient.  He cared about nature--nature.  Seventeen had a glimmer of a memory.  He and his sister, much younger, before they became hellion delinquents who ran away from home.  Walking through the forest while he told her not to trample the plants.  Seventeen blinked.  He thought Gero would have erased their memories but the human brain was probably beyond his comprehension, the old bastard.

“Let me know when you find somewhere to go,” she said. “So I know where you are.”

“Of course.”

She flew off, probably to try and quell her strange and new thoughts, and Seventeen was left by himself.  He examined his hands and wiggled his toes.  He touched his hair and his face.  Everything was where it was supposed to be--except for the bomb, of course.

He wasn’t sure where to go, honestly.  Maybe he could go to the woods.  Find a remote, abandoned cabin and live his life there, surrounded by wildlife.  He would catalogue all of the birds he’d find in case that blue-haired genius girl found a way to fix Sixteen.

He sat by himself in the place where he died, not ready to go.  His legs worked and he could fly--if his sister could so shortly after being brought back, he could as well.  Another memory.  A woman with hair so blonde it was almost white and diamonds sparkling like shards of ice at her throat and ears.  “Like Lapis like Lazuli,” she said and then puffed smoke from her painted lips.  He wondered if this was what his life would be: fragmented nostalgia and no purpose.

He could, maybe, go after Goku--maybe even find out what he looked like.  That was his programming, wasn’t it?  He certainly heard Gero rant about it.  Once Seventeen mocked him repeatedly by purposely saying he would do different things to Son Goku, substituting whatever verb came to mind in place of “kill.”  How the good doctor got so fed up he deactivated him and Eighteen both.  Asshole.  He didn’t regret killing him.

He felt a pulse of energy he knew not to be his sister returning.  Much like the humans, he couldn’t sense her energy either.  He wasn’t sure who it was or why they were approaching but they weren’t--powerful.  It wasn’t Son Goku or his son or even that obnoxious prince.  It was too strong a signature for any of their human friends either.  He saw a silhouette in the sky, much like the bird from before, and it grew larger as it approached.

When it drew nearer, he could make out the features of Son Goku’s brother, Radish or whatever.

_Raditz.  You know this._

Maybe he did.  He leaned back on his hands in his seated position and stretched his legs out in front of him.  He didn’t know why he was flying by or how he found his little valley of resurrection.

“Hello,” he called.

Raditz landed and he looked befuddled as if he himself didn’t know why he was here.

“You found me,” he said.

“I did.”

Raditz looked at him and a small smirk formed on his handsome face.  It didn’t escape Seventeen that the brother of his target was good-looking.  He was big and beefy with a sharply handsome face--and that hair.  He had never seen hair like that, so riotous and voluminous.  He stared at Raditz’s bare thighs and then flicked his gaze to his face.

“How?”

“Dunno.” He shrugged those broad shoulders of his. “I was just flying and saw you there.”

“I see.  Clearing your head?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

Raditz shrugged again and, without waiting for an invitation, sat down across from Seventeen.  He was warm, so close, and he smelled musky and sweaty.  Upon closer examination, he looked tired too, worn out.  There was dried blood on his exposed skin--so much of it deliciously exposed--but no cuts or bruises.  They maybe had a healer or he ate one of those magic beans everyone crunched on.

“Don’t you have a celebration to head to?” he asked. “Cell is defeated, after all.  The world is saved.”

“Dunno if there’ll be one.”

“Oh?”

Seventeen was glad he was there.  He was a distraction from his lack of direction in what to do.

“The evil is vanquished.  The conquering heroes return home.” He cupped his hands over his mouth and imitated a cheering crowd.  That nearly got him a smile.

Raditz’s big fingers messed with the band of red around his thigh.  He’d seen other Saiyan armor--at least what Vegeta wore--and they were far more covered up.  Raditz’s armor was scandalously revealing.  Even as he taunted the others, he couldn’t help but admire him.

Another memory, this one recent.  The suffocating bell of Cell’s tail.  The breath being siphoned out of him and his arms pinned to his sides.  Hated it.  Reminded him of--something.  Not Gero, but before.  And then a slight tug in the opposite direction, a feeling of pressure on his ankle.  Over the rushing in his head, a loud voice crying “Let him go!”

“Have you come to take me in?” he asked and shook his head to rid himself of the memory. “I’ll even come quietly.  Even though I try not to.”

If Raditz caught his innuendo, he made no sign of it.

“Why would I?”

“I tried to kill your brother.  I might still.”

Raditz stared at him, eyes blank.

“That would be pretty hard for you to do,” he said, voice flat and empty. “Considering he’s dead.”

Seventeen stared at him, waiting for the punchline of this surprisingly macabre joke.  When it didn’t come, he didn’t know what to say.  Anything he could conjure would be devoid of meaning.  He couldn’t remember loss--no.  The gnawing earlier when he was told about what happened to Sixteen.  Maybe he could relate.

“Oh.”

But he couldn’t say it.  He always was...cavalier about death.  He was virtually immortal and indestructible so death was an abstract concept, not a reality.

“Will you live with his family?”

Raditz turned his hand down and shook his head.

“I didn’t before.”

“Then where?”

“Back to the woods, probably.  I liked it there.  Some of the planets we’d go to on missions would have these big forests.  I liked it, even if we destroyed them.”

Missions?  It struck Seventeen, then, that he knew nothing about him or what Saiyans did.  Dr. Gero only knew creatures of great strength came to earth from the stars and he wanted their cells to make his creature.

“What missions?”

“In the PTO,” he said. “Uh, that is the Planetary Trade Organization.  We Saiyans were Freeza’s muscles, destroying planets for resale.”

So a destructive race.  Dr. Gero had gathered as much but Seventeen never really cared to pay attention.  He thought their tails were interesting but that was all.  Until he saw the big, thick scantily clad warrior gaping in disbelief as he and his sister were activated.

“You did this a lot?”

“Yeah.  Had to.”

“Had to?  You didn’t want to.”

Raditz shrugged and drew his finger through the dirt.

“I did and I didn’t.  I like fighting and I kinda liked being called a pirate but.  I was always told I was a failure as a Saiyan and it was only a dumb stroke of luck that let me survive our planet blowing up.”

“Who told you that?”

“Vegeta, mostly.”

He could see that.

“Nappa, he was kinda our caretaker even if he only really gave a shit about Vegeta’s well being.  He was his bodyguard or something back when that shit mattered but I was a kid, too, and he kinda looked out for me.  In his own way.” His face soured again. “He used to say I was like my mother.  Weak.”

Mother.  Seventeen’s mind went back to that flicker of memory.  Was that faceless woman his mother?

“Weak?”

“My mom used to do combat missions but she sucked at it so they reassigned her to meat distribution.” He sighed. “Guess I sucked at it, too.”

He wasn’t sure why Raditz was speaking to him like this.  Maybe it was because he was there and he just needed someone to hear it.  Seventeen crossed his legs and leaned his elbows on his legs, propping his chin up in his hands.

“I see,” he said. “Do you miss her?”

He nodded. “Do you miss yours?”

“I don’t remember her.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause and a sudden tension in the air.  Seventeen didn’t like it.  He sprang to his feet in one motion.

“Well, let’s go.”

“Go?” Raditz cocked a brow, suddenly skeptical. “Let’s?”

Seventeen smirked. “Yes.  Take me to your house in the woods.  I need a place to go.”

\--

The cabin was as remote as the one Seventeen thought to run off to.  It was dingy and dusty but still oddly lived in.  There was no electricity but it was close to a stream and there was a wood stove in one corner.  A bedroll was in one corner and it made something ping in his chest.

“What are you going to do?” Raditz asked.

Seventeen sat on the floor because there was nowhere else to sit.  Maybe he could get him a table or something, some chairs.  This was spartan and, more than that, it was sad.

“Maybe I’ll become a park ranger,” he said. “I always liked nature.  Which is ironic considering what I am.”

He flexed one hand and it made no sound but he knew he knew that there were cybernetic replacements under his skin in place of bones.

“I hated what he did to me,” he said before he could stop himself. “I hate being unnatural.”

Raditz squatted down in front of him and prodded a finger into his cheek.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Checking.  You feel pretty natural to me.”

Seventeen batted his hand down and rolled his eyes.  Cheesy bastard, wasn’t he?

“How’d it happen?” Raditz asked. “The cyborg thing.”

Seventeen didn’t remember much of it.

“My sister and I were runaways and a guy offered us food and a dry place to sleep.  The food was drugged and the next thing I knew, I was strapped to a table while Gero cackled at me.  That’s all I remember.”

There had been a promise, though, one he had extorted from the good doctor.  “The body I desired,” was what he’d managed to get out in his drugged stupor.

“You should get some furniture.”

Seventeen jumped to his feet.

“What for?”

“I’m staying here.  I want a place to sit.” He pointed to the bedroll. “You need a proper mattress, too.  And a room divider.”

Raditz blinked at him, confused at his sudden attitude.

“Uh.  Sure.  Why not?”

\--

It took two months for them to make the cabin more homey.  Dust didn’t bother Seventeen but he cleaned it up, anyway.  Raditz was filthy and while he wasn’t exactly Mr. Clean, he at least didn’t want to live in a dung heap.  They made a table and chairs out of wood from the forest and, reluctantly, Raditz asked Bulma for some money to get more suitable furniture.  They couldn’t find a room divider so Seventeen rigged up a pole and hung bed sheets over it.  It didn’t offer a lot of privacy but it gave them the illusion of separate rooms.

He didn’t have to eat but if he did, he was certain he would lose his appetite whenever he watched Raditz gorge himself on whatever he caught.  Those big, sharp teeth of his were meant for tearing meat, apparently, and he did so nearly round the clock.  When he wasn’t sleeping, he was eating.  Seventeen mostly kept to himself during his mealtime, making etchings of leaves and cataloguing what animals he saw.  Every now and then there would be a dinosaur that would come after him and he’d have to kill it.  He would bring the meat home even though he didn’t want to.  He somehow knew that before all of this, he used to be a vegetarian and the sight of raw meat (and the way Raditz ate it without cooking it) made his stomach turn.

Other than that, he was a fine companion.  They were together in their loneliness.  They were two outsiders in their remote, faraway life.

Seventeen didn’t think he had to sleep but he went through the motions anyway.  He laid down in bed and closed his eyes.  Sometimes, he thought his body shut down enough to give him a semblance of rest but that was a lie.  He had infinite energy, after all, it wasn’t like he needed to recharge.

Tonight, he was in bed, staring at the ceiling above him, his sharp eyes able to pierce through the dark.  The candles made from animal fat that stank while they burned had been put out.  Seventeen thought that maybe he would go into town and get some candles and candleholders.  Maybe a lantern.  He wasn’t so sure with his hands when it came to anything other than cars (something he thought might have been a holdover from his life Before) but maybe they could make some sort of rudimentary power generator using the stream.  He could talk to Bulma.  She seemed all too willing to help as if she knew that since she couldn’t fight, all she could contribute was her genius and her money.  Seventeen didn’t mind her even if he balked at her taste in men.

She was the only one who contacted them.  Now and then, he could sense the energy of someone else near the cabin but they never strayed too close.  Once, he felt two energies, one small but concentrated, but before he could get a proper read on them, they were gone.

Seventeen rolled over.  He didn’t get cold but he liked the feeling of a blanket at night.  It felt proper.  It made him feel real and whole and not a mechanical facsimile.

He heard something through the curtain of sheets.  It was quiet at first but grew persistently clearer the more he listened.  Crying.  Raditz was crying.

He probably wanted his privacy but no one ever said that Seventeen did what others wanted.  Another memory--this one a man in a suit, sitting at a desk.  “You’re a reckless anarchist!  You won’t make it out alive!”  It faded as he got out of his bed and crossed over the linen barrier.

“Raditz?”

He could see him under his blankets, curled up and looking like someone stuffed a whole boulder under there.  Seventeen inched it back and saw his hands covering his face.

“You’re crying,” he said.

“Dr. Gero make you that observant or what?”

It was meant to cut, but Seventeen only let it nick him.

“What’s wrong?”

Raditz unfurled his body somewhat and looked at him.  In the dark, he could see the tear tracks glistening on his cheeks.

“My brother’s dead,” he said, voice quaking. “My brother and my parents are dead and no one’s left to give a shit about me.”

Seventeen wasn’t sure what to do.  He patted at Raditz’s hair with his palm awkwardly.

“You’re bad at this.”

“I’ve never claimed otherwise.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and let Raditz cry.  He had clearly kept it in for so long, this grief.  He thought about Sixteen again.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Raditz said after a moment.  He was still crying but the sobs weren’t as evident. “I never realized how alone I was until I wasn’t anymore.”

It probably wasn’t meant as flirtatious but once it was said, they looked at each other in a different way.  Seventeen couldn’t read the look but it was something, like that pause when they met again nearly a year ago now.  He hopped to his feet.

“I’m going back to bed.” He tipped his head to the side. “Try not to wake me with your tears.”

“I know you don’t sleep, asshole,” Raditz sneered but he already sounded better.

Seventeen wasn’t sure why he was smiling as he laid back down in his bed.

\--

It took almost another year for their relationship to change.  Raditz could feel it, at least in himself.  Seeking out Seventeen and sitting with him while he did his nature thing.  He was taking correspondence classes to become a park ranger under an assumed name.  Bulma set up the identity for him just like she outfitted their cabin with electricity and running water.  Sometimes she bullied them to come to Capsule Corps, like she did today.  It was nice, eating properly cooked food.  Seventeen never liked when Raditz ate raw meat, even if he was inexplicably sitting in on the other man’s meals now, and trying to hold a conversation with him while he ate.

Trunks ran across the grass in the arched-back way toddlers did.  He trailed after Vegeta who pretended not to notice him following him.  Raditz noticed there were minute changes in his prince.  He wasn’t holding himself so rigidly and, when he thought no one was looking, he looked at Trunks with actual fondness.

“Trunks worships him now,” Bulma told them in a stage whisper. “Whenever Vegeta trains, he bangs on the door to the gravity room to try and get in.  Last night, I came out of the lab and they were asleep on the couch together.”

“Don’t you spread those lies!” Vegeta cried vehemently.

“I have pictures,” she said and then winked at Raditz.

Bulma adapted quickly, he thought.  She was just as frightened as anyone else when he first came to try and sway Kakarrot to their side but now she treated him like an old friend.  Then again, she ended up in bed and then in a relationship with the guy who murdered her friends so maybe she was just a shitty judge of character.

He nodded through a mouthful of rice.  Even though he saw it coming, seeing the fact that Vegeta was clearly changing made him feel some kind of way.  It was the last vestiges of the life he had known slipping away and how he still had no purpose.  He lived day to day and he _liked_ his life with Seventeen, but he still did nothing but sleep and eat.  But what was there for him?  A piss-poor low-class warrior who was revived against all odds.

“You should see Gohan and Chi-Chi,” she said. “Have you even been to see the baby yet?”

Raditz shook his head.

“He looks just like Goku.”

That familiar ache.  Since the floodgates opened, he cried more readily now.  The tears Nappa and Vegeta teased him over.  More recently, Seventeen began sitting with him and, once, he used that orange bandana he wore to dab away his tears.

“Maybe we’ll visit.”

It was a lie and maybe Bulma knew it was a lie but she didn’t say anything.

“Maybe.  Here take home some leftovers.” She looked at Seventeen and said, “You’ve got a big, he-man Saiyan to feed.”

Somehow, that seemed to fluster him.  Seventeen so rarely got flustered so it was always a treat to see.  He blinked rapidly.

‘I don’t have him--I mean, I.” He shook his head and smoothed both hands over his hair. “Thank you for the leftovers.”

Raditz bided his time until they got home and put the food in their new refrigerator.  His cabin was looking more like a house and less like a glorified roof over his head.

“You can have me,” he said, trying to sound as smooth as possible. “If you want.”

Seventeen stared at him for a moment.

“Who says I want to?”

He said it so simply but Raditz felt the edge on his words.  He swallowed and tried to play it off.

“I’m just saying.  The offer’s there.”

Seventeen walked by him and put a hand on his cheek.  As usual, his hands were ice cold and sent a shiver down his back.

“Duly noted.”

He thought he was going to simply walk by and go outside to his favored tree but, instead, he kissed him.

Raditz wasn’t sure what brought it on but the moment his lips touched his, he knew that this was what he wanted.  It went beyond simple attraction or their shared living space.  It was what he wanted, needed.  Purpose.  In another being.

He held Seventeen to his chest and he felt the other man’s slim fingers hook in the hem of his shirt--Earth clothes he had started wearing at Seventeen’s behest.  When he said it was unfair that he walked around nearly naked.  Unfair.  Maybe this _was_ a long time coming for them both.

They separated and Seventeen looked at him with his usual sardonic yet unreadable expression on his face.

“Let’s take the divider down.”

\--

It took another month for them to get one bed.  It became a necessity as they broke both of theirs.  This one was bigger with thick, sturdy legs and Seventeen looked forward to destroying it.

“We can’t,” Raditz said, gasping one night as Seventeen rode him. “Our benefactor’s getting mad.”

“I’m almost done with my studies.”

“How much does--aah--a park ranger make?”

Seventeen paused for a moment.

“Good point.  Let’s be more careful.”

He resumed his hip gyrations but at a more moderate pace.  He loved riding him like this, straddling him and looking down at Raditz beneath him.  Over the past several months, they had tried other positions but this was his favorite.

“How do you sweat?” Raditz had asked one time after they were finished.

“I get dehydrated, too.  It’s weird,” he’d said back.

Both of their bodies were slick with sweat and he was only aware of his steady increasing breathing and the slap of skin on skin.  Raditz moaned beneath him, arching his back and then dropping his hips back onto the mattress.  He held Seventeen by his hipbones as he jerked his own hips up and down.

He came in a shuddering wave, glad not for the first time that Dr. Gero didn’t take _that_ away from him, and slid bonelessly onto Raditz’s chest.  He let him stroke his back and rest both of his hands on his backside.

“I’m mad it took us almost two years to get to doing this,” Raditz said, breathless.

Seventeen nodded and tucked his head under his chin.  It was more than sex, he thought.  It was something he didn’t think he would feel.  What his sister wrote about in a tersely worded letter (“You won’t believe who I went on a date with last night.”  Seventeen could make a guess).  It didn’t fill him with anxiety like he thought it might.  He had the capacity for love, by now that was clear.  He loved his sister and he think he might have loved Sixteen.  For a short time, they were a sort of family.  And now, here he was, with a new family, even if it was just the two of them.

“I’m glad we did, though,” he said.

Raditz held him tight.

“I’m glad we did, too.”

\--

“Who’s Bardock?”

“Hmm?”

Raditz looked up from rocking the cradle.  Seventeen had been about to intervene anyway since he was rocking it with his foot.  One slip up and their son--this baby that wouldn’t exist if Gero had _listened_ to him and kept his promise--would go flying.

“The baby.  You named him Bardock.  Who is that?  Or is it just a Saiyan name?”

Raditz looked fondly at the sleeping infant.  It already looked like him, all big features and thick brows.  And that hair, too.  When he opened his eyes, though, Lapis saw that they were blue.

“Bardock was my father’s name,” he said.

“Was he a warrior?”

Raditz’s face lit up and he looked like a little boy.

“The best!  He was low-class like me but he was so powerful, he even got audience with the King sometimes.”

He could tell just from how he spoke that he looked up to him.  Seventeen came and put his arms around him, his husband.  Sometimes the light gleamed on the ring on his hand and it caught him off-guard.

“Then he has quite the legacy to live up to.” Seventeen fiddled with his earring and said, “Do you think, maybe when he’s a little older, that we could look into adoption?”

“What’s that?”

He sighed.  Some of earth’s nuances were still lost on him after all these years.  He couldn’t believe the ruckus when he told him he had to use a fork or chopsticks (“What’s wrong with a knife?!”).

“You take in a child to raise as your own.”

“Like...take them off the street?”

Seventeen sighed again. “No.  From an agency.”

“Oh!” Raditz shrugged and gave him a smile. “Sure.  Why not?”

Seventeen sat next to him and reached his arms up to wrap them around Raditz’s shoulders as best as he could.  When he was resurrected, he hadn’t thought that this was where life would go.  He had had no view of what his life would be, only that this wouldn’t be it.  A husband.  A child.  A little house in the forest where they lived together.  Gohan visited some and Goten did more frequently, coming with Chi-Chi when she visited to check on the baby.  Seventeen suspected that she didn’t fully trust Raditz with him.  His sister wrote when she felt like it but she lived far and had a child of her own now.

“I love you,” he said.

Raditz beamed at him.

“Love you too, Sevs.”

**Author's Note:**

> vertigoats.tumblr.com


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